# 18 x 1GiB = 18GiB# assuming maximum write SATA2 286MiB/sec this should take more than a minute# assuming poor write speed of 5 MiB/sec this should take more than a hour# either way one pass should happen within 12 hoursecho touch $DEST/testbegin-write-starttimetouch $DEST/testbegin-write-starttimedateecho syncsyncdate

# 18 x 1GiB = 18GiB# assuming maximum read SATA2 286MB/sec this whould take just over a minute# assuming poor read speed of 5 MiB/sec this should take just over a hour# This script assumes that write-throughputtest.sh was run# previously to generate the data files.

I'm converting the results so that I can display them in MiB/sec instead of dd's default of MB/sec. Because I'm copying a Gigabyte of data with each block size all I need to do is divide 1024 by the number of seconds that it took to get the result in MiB/second.

I decided to run the tests again with an old 128GB SSD (write performance will be OKish because it is used, but read performance should be better than spinning rust). But to avoid killing it (small writes cause SSD's to fail prematurely) I started the write testing at 4K block size.The read test block size does not matter at all, SSD's always fail due to running out of writes (3000-5000 per block) long before any wear due to reads can happen. The reason I ran the tests again with a SSD was because I felt that the limiting factor was the Harddisk's poor read/write performance and not any limit of the Banana Pi's SATA 2.0 port.

Since the throughput is more than 150MB/sec, it does confirm that the SATA port in the Banana Pi is SATA 2.0. And I suspect that it could get closer to the SATA 2.0 limit of 300MB/sec if I used a brand new SSD. I have to admit that I am so much more impressed by a Banana Pi especially when compared to a Raspberry Pi. Especially for pushing large amounts of data about fast, it is brilliant hardware.

I don't know what kernel I had installed at the time of the test, but this is the current one. Not much would have changed in terms on SATA performance on the BananaPi-M1 (Performance would be much lower on the BananaPi-M3 that uses a USB-SATA bridge controller chip).

http://www.banana-pi.org/m1.html <<---- this is the board that I did my tests on.http://www.banana-pi.org/m3.html <<---- this is their new 8 core board.

Be-ware the Banana Pi M2 and M3 doesn't have a native SATA connector! The M3 has a SATA connector, but it's a USB-SATA-bridge bleeh. The Banana Pi Pro does have a native SATA connector again. The forum also snub the multi-core chip: